


Desk Toys of Mysterious Purpose

by Scientia_Fantasia



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Autistic Character, M/M, basically gen sorry, set during brotherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 09:56:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5924101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scientia_Fantasia/pseuds/Scientia_Fantasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shaun tries to get Desmond to stop being annoying by lending him his fidget toys</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desk Toys of Mysterious Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> Okay well here's this. Can you believe there's only one other fic with an autistic character in the Assassin's Creed tag I Can't Believe This
> 
> anyways I hate to leave things as vague as I did in some places but yeah
> 
> alternate title: Shaun Hastings Has Stim Toys and a Huge Crush

Okay, no, this wasn’t going to work. It was already late--early, _whenever_ , he was _tired--_ and Shaun did like doing his job, he really did, but it was to that point where the meanings of words were disappearing the second they got past his eyeballs and he was scanning over sentences again and again to try and figure out where he’d left off his previous thought and it didn’t _help_ that Desmond apparently felt the need to sit a few feet away at the other end of his desk, flipping through one of Shaun’s precious reference books and _jiggling his leg, why the leg_ , and it wasn’t that Shaun wasn’t enjoying their precious family time together, it was just that he _wasn’t enjoying their time together_ and the chair was squeaking and Shaun was either going to chew the inside of his mouth to bleeding or tell him off and British or not, he really had no quarrel speaking his mind when it got to this point.

“My _God_ will you _stop_ that?” he snapped, turning to look more or less at the midpoint of the desk between them as even his quiet irritation echoed around the bare walls of the sanctum. Desmond finally went still, and Shaun felt muscles relaxing that he hadn’t even known were tense. Much better. “If you need to jump around somewhere then run laps outside, some of us are actually trying to get work done here.”

“Sorry,” said Desmond. Shaun huffed, turning back to his computer and the calming tapping of his fingers at the keyboard. He almost managed to forget Desmond was there until he started making a godawful--just--a _noise_ , and Shaun turned to see him gnawing on his already dangerously short fingernails. He could almost forgive the horrific hygiene if the man had had the grace to do it _quietly_.

Right. Well, time for a change in tactics.

He pulled open a drawer at the desk--no, not that one. Bugger, moving around all the time was hell on trying to keep things organized. He opened the one under it--there--and pulled out what looked, more or less, like a tiny plastic bike chain.

He placed it pointedly in front of Desmond and then attempted to get back to his work.

The _noise_ was soon replaced by the much more tolerable sound of the chains clicking as they did when bent at or unbent from a 90 degree angle, but Shaun hardly even got a moment of respite before Desmond decided to do _the_ most annoying thing possible-- _speak_ to him.

“What is this?”

Shaun huffed. “A keep-Desmond-quiet toy,” he answered. Hint, hint.

“What else do you have in there?”

“Oh, good, it’s defective-- _hey!_ ” He slammed a hand over the front of the drawer, barely fast enough to keep Desmond from rooting around in it. Desmond, to his credit, did draw back. “What are you _doing_?”

“You weren’t answering,” he said, attempting to defuse the situation with a not-at-all-charming smile, thank you. “I’m curious.”

“I get curious, too, that doesn’t mean I go digging around in people’s things without asking,” Shaun said, his mind catching up a little too slowly with his words in realizing the irony of that statement. Well, Desmond probably wouldn’t notice.

“Isn’t that the entire reason Abstergo--”

Shit. “Yes, thank you, I realize that now.”

Desmond laughed, and Shaun looked away, adjusting his glasses as an excuse to cover his quickly reddening face. He wasn’t that embarrassed. Really. It just...happened.

It seemed that his tormenter had fallen quiet, but Shaun knew better than to let his guard down. A series of facts presented themselves to him. There was no lock on his desk, Desmond kept a decidedly irregular sleep schedule, and most importantly, Shaun was not going to oblige him in creating some great mystery to be solved at his expense.

“I’ll show you _most_ of what I have in there,” he bargained, “but only if you promise to not go snooping around for the rest of it.”

Desmond thought over it. “Doesn’t sound like much of a deal on my end.”

“Well, it is, if you care anything at all about what I think of you as a person and whether you have the decency enough to respect my basic human right to privacy.” Was he getting snippy? He may have been getting snippy.

“Oh,” went Desmond. “I...if it’s that big of a deal, then nevermind...”

Shaun huffed. Great. Now he was mad with nothing to be mad at. And it wasn’t _really_ a big deal, that was the exact opposite impression he wanted to give off, it was just that...well, he didn’t really want to think about what the real problem was.

He pulled out a few things from the desk, placing them on the table one by one. A Rubik’s Cube. A large marble. A metal gyroscope. A stress ball. He shut the drawer again, and shrugged, sitting back in his chair. With that set of things, he could easily just pass them off as--

“Desk toys?” Desmond asked, sounding sufficiently perplexed.

“Yes.” Perhaps they were, actually. He’d never really questioned the proclivity of them in the...more _general_ populace, but maybe they served the same purpose.

“Huh.” He picked up the marble and looked over it, weighing it in his hand, holding it up to a light. “Seems kind of...I don’t know. I figured you kind've have to stick with the essentials when you’re running from Abstergo all the time.”

“Yes, well, when you do this for a living, stress relief tends to be fairly essential.”

Desmond set the marble down, lightly enough that it hardly made a noise against the desk. “Guess I get that,” he said. Then, “Guess ‘keeping Desmond quiet’ is pretty essential, too, huh?” Shaun didn’t have to look at him to know he was making that face again, all...smiling and twinkly eyes. Bastard.

“Incredibly.”

**Author's Note:**

> further things shaun has in his desk because i know you want to know: probably this thing http://www.stimtastic.co/stim-jewelry/chewable-faceted-bangle-bracelet and some candy and maybe like a dice bag that either actually has dice or a few coins. nods.


End file.
